AS many as 60 workers could be made redundant at the Australian Tax Office’s Hobart office by October, according to the Australian Services Union.

The union’s Jeff Lapidos said as many as 30 ATO workers could depart by the end of this month, to be followed by a similar number by October, as part of an Australia-wide voluntary redundancy program that aims to reduce ATO’s head count by 3000.

Mr Lapidos said the closure of the ATO’s Launceston regional office, announced last week, involved the forced redundancy of about 20 workers.

He said the news left the Launceston workers distraught.

The Federal Government has reduced ATO’s funding by $112 million to $3.2 billion for 2014-15 and the agency last month indicated that it could resort to forced redundancies across all of its sites if there were insufficient volunteers.